Reviews and Events

Monday, 18 April 2016

A week in my life as a blogging Mum

I'm a novice blogger so I don't feel the stress as I have no deadlines (blogging) to meet.I blog when time permits and I thank God that my present working arrangement allows me to spend most of my time with the people close to me.

Eventually,I hope my boys will be able to join me on this journey too as children (or even adults) nowadays seem too busy or distracted (from a teacher's viewpoint) to reflect on their life, missing out on the true, purpose of life.

My Mornings......

My day normally starts at 430 am everyday. This is a precious period for me to accomplish several tasks. I plan lessons both for school and Sunday School, I mark, I cook, I read. I pray. This week is a bit challenging because it is Primary school's CA week. Being a language teacher, I am flooded with compositions everyday, and to add on to my usual work load, I have to complete 114 pieces of exam scripts within these few days. Oh, and not to mention about setting exam papers. For this morning, my goal is to clear my stack of compo in preparation for the exam scripts. Being a working mother of 2 young boys means I can only work when they are asleep. which means either late in the night or during the wee hours.

A cup of coffee every morning, keeps my sleeping monster away

Stacks of examination scripts to complete

Morning is also a good time for me to prepare resources for my boys' Bible time. This is a still-in-progress file folder game for classification of New Testament Books.

File folder game for classifiaction of New Testament Books

Also preparing my resources for teaching children Bible Class. The theme is Noah, a man of great faith in the Bible, someone who withstood 120 years of mockery and ridicule from people around him but yet still stayed focused on his most important task on hand, building the Ark. The kids and I sure have a lot to learn about him!

A simple game for the lesson on Noah

But thank God for His guidance, amidst the hectic schedule, I still managed to squeeze out time in the morning to prepare bentos for my hubby and son. As requested by my elder boy, Char Kway Tiao with egg and luncheon meat for his lunch and egg mayonnaise sandwiches for his breakfast.

Sandwiches for my boy

For myself!

Lunch for my hubby

Char Kway Tiao for lunch

And the most important thing to do, I pray before I start each day. There are too many things to pray for and my heart can't settle till I have handed this day to the Lord. I pray for safety, I pray for forgiveness, I pray for health, I pray for the sick, I pray for some angry hearts who are unable to let go of the past, I pray for wisdom to play my role as a mother and teacher well, I pray for my students to do their best in whatever they could and that they may work hard and soar together with me, I pray for the leaders of Singapore and I thank God for this wonderful country and life that He has blessed me with.

Our afternoons......

I am really thankful for being a school teacher because I have quite a number of working options to choose from. I have taken two and a half years of no paid leave, during which I continued to teach at school with flexible working hours (with support from school management of course!). This year, my no paid leave officially ended but I have chosen a reduced workload scheme leaving most of my afternoons free. This is of utmost importance as I feel that my presence is necessary for my boys' growing years, to lay a firm foundation for them so that they know who to follow (Jesus of course!) and be immuned to peer pressure (hopefully!)

So how does our afternoons look like?

Time after work is mostly spent with my boys.

After some enlightenment from a sister-in-Christ,I stopped doing academic stuffs with my boys at home.I used to dutifully revise school work, prepare activities, phonics and Chinese word cards for both of them but I think that all these took up too much of our time that we are left with little for our Bible study.So as advised by my sister-in-Christ,I decided to leave all these academic stuffs to the school and focus on just learning God's word at home. Besides learning God's Word, I believe this is also a good time to teach him some life skills, how to manage his time, be focused on his task at hand and the importance of prioritizing, well, of course they still have much to improve, this is a never ending journey!

After unpacking his bag and having his tea break, he will proceed to learn his spelling and 听写. We always learn the words one week in advance so that he will not have to cramp so many words in a day. He will do his learning while I bathe and settle some misc stuffs......

#1 learning his 听写

Thereafter, he will spend some time doing some stretching, he has started learning Wushu recently and flexibility really plays a very important role to help him do his stances well. Thank God we finally found and settle on one Wushu school which I am very happy with, hopefully, he will continue to learn well in this school for many years to come. I varied the training a little everyday, depending on his needs from my observation of him during his Wushu class.

After #1 is done with his stretching, we are ready to start with our Bible time! We have a variety of choices for our Bible time. Sometimes, we will cuddle together to read a Bible story from their Children Bible followed by a discussion and some reflections in which both boys can contribute.

Sometimes, we read books from these "God, I need to talk to you about" series.

"Bad Words" and "Greed" from "God, I need to talk to you about" series

Sometimes, I will choose a parable, a devotion, or some verses to share and discuss with them. A day or two in a week, my boys will be watching the Bible stories from these vcds. They love the stories inside, "David and Goliath", "Joshua", "Moses". "Creation" etc, and even act out the stories on their own. My #2 learned one very important sentence in English (he speaks only Mandarin) from watching these :"God is my Friend!"

While they are watching their vcds, I will make use of this time to continue with another project of mine. Intend to create a giantic Bible timeline so that my boys will have a clearer idea of the happenings in the Bible in chronological order, but I think this project is going to take some time......Pictures are drawn and colored by me.

Our Bible Time will usually end with a memory verse session. I will introduce them new verses according to their pace of learning.

Memory verse cards for my #1

As for my #2 who is 3 this year, he is still learning these 2 memory verses- Gen 1:1 and Eph 6:1-3.

以弗所书6：1-2你们作儿女的，要在主里听从父母，这是理所当然的。要孝敬父母，使你得福，在世长寿。这是第一条带应许的诫命。

While I am busy with #2, #1 will then be doing some independent activity. For now, he is learning Old Testament books so he will need to arrange the books in chronological order.

So this sums up our Bible time!

For this week, I have to do this in the afternoon also.....both my boys have been plagued with this phlegmy cough ever since they started school. Must have been a virus spreading around, this is already the 2nd or 3rd bout.

#2 with his nebulizer

Our Evenings......

Our evenings are pretty simple but fruitful, as I mentioned earlier in my post that I will try not to spend too much time touching on academic stuffs at home, our evenings are used to read, read and Read! There is nothing more important than nurturing their love to read during these early years of their life.

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."

Borrowed more English books this time round because the previous trip we choseso many more Chinese books

So yes, I hope my boys will learn how to fish soon. Once again, I am really thankful to be in Singapore! Libraries are all around us and there really isn't any excuse why we aren't bringing our children there. Libraries are comfortable, free and load our brains with so much useful stuffs. And although we do have a small collection of books at home, I still hope my boys will cultivate the habit of going to libraries as the variety and collection of books is so much more. We will try to go to Jurong Regional library every fortnightly. So far, it is something that my boys enjoy and look forward to.

The brothers reading together after choosing their books

Sending #1 to his Wushu class is one of the things I look forward to in the evenings as I enjoy watching him progress little by little every week. After searching for such a long time, I have finally found a suitable Wushu school, Xuan Sports Wushu, with dedicated coaches who are able to maintain great discipline during lessons. I hope this will be a long-term or possibly life long learning for my boys.

Xuan Sports Wushu classes are held at Bukit Batok East Community Club. I think the learning environment is great as the beginners and higher standard students all train in the same hall which is a great source of motivation!

My nights after the boys are in bed......

By now, I won't have much energy to do any markings unless I am left with no choice. So I will make use of this time to surf the net, update my blog or prepare the ingredients needed for my bentos the next morning.

Preparing the egg mayonnaise for my sandwiches the next morning

Our weekends......
The long awaited weekends is finally here! We love weekends as it's a time when papa can have more time with us!

We are fortunate to receive complimentary tickets to the "The Three Billy Goats Gruff" performance at the Singapore Repertory Theatre, We really enjoyed the show, their singing is superb and their harmonizing skill is comparable to HI-5!

We usually engage ourselves in some free and fun activities that keep our bodies and wallets healthy like swimming, picnics or some mountain climbing.

Yea! We reached the summit!

Exploring the track after our climb

Weekend is also a time for me to settle my household chores! I do the basic minimum. My house is generally tidy and clean and always ready for visitation but definitely not spick and span.

Boys helping out with the chores

Saturday evening is our family Bible time and we are starting the boys off with some verses from the book of Proverbs, for this session we studied chapter 3 verse 11 and 12.

We usually will not arrange any gatherings on Sunday as our time is spent in the Church and thereafter with my in-laws.

A good night rest to prepare ourselves for another week.

I relish every moment of being a mum. It is a dream come true and I have been blessed with more than I deserved. Though a strong-willed boy and a strong-willed mum sends sparks flying all around the house everyday, though I go to bed sometimes feeling wretched and can't help but wonder if I have wrecked my boys' lives, though I still stumble and struggle at the same spot and has yet to cross this hurdle, I am thankful. Perhaps this is God's way of training me. And perhaps this is how I will learn that I am nothing without Him.

Look out for Shermeen at http://www.meeningfully.com/ tomorrow, she's a full time working mother who spends her day in the world of marketing, becomes cleaner, laundress, teach, cook, listener and friend to her only child J after she sheds her corporate do. Together with the men of her life, she shares their experiences as a family on the blog. Read on to find out how she manages all these and blog at the same time.